The dim orange light from the lamp in the second-floor den reached out through the open wood door. The lamp casted shadows over the floating debris in the black water.

I jumped out the door to where the tsunami had erased a wooden side balcony. Immediately I landed with my head under the black water, and my eyes burned like acid had poured into them.

I screamed and tasted the sour, bitter taste of acrid metal and rust. Salt was the least potent force penetrating my tastes.

I gasped with a splash out through the bitingly cold surface, and the smell was so putrid, that the odor stunk of dead fish, rust, and lost souls swimming in the water. I batted my eyes only to catch the blur of dim orange light behind me.

The sounds of chunks of broken infrastructure rising and falling with the rolling waves rang like a moaning chorus. I scraped my legs and arms reaching myself forward and I climbed onto a metal fence with all the might of my fingers hosting me over.

Travis's body was inches away, his back splayed over a cast of torn fence wiring. His head lay back without support in the tsunamic water.

"Travis!" I screamed. "Travis—I'm here—everything's will to be okay!" But my soothing words broke under the reality that Travis was not moving. Travis, the boy I did feel closest to besides Craig, was just a rag in the water.

His flesh rolled over the waves like an abandoned surfboard. I cried because, my heart knew he would die.